Frustrated with the limitations of the traditional QWERTY layout, McEnaney spent the last decade designing a new one. Considering that the universal key arrangement was designed in the typewriter age — patented in 1878 — an alternative seems due. This one’s inspired by a bee.

McEnaney wasn’t satisfied with other typing options people turn to — the most prominent being Dvorak, which aims to diminish how far the fingers move and reduce fatigue. He thought the learning curve was too great. Users need to seriously commit to becoming proficient. That’s how we get to the BeeRaider, his oddly shaped keyboard that resembles a bee in flight, with two “wings” of keys arranged on either side of a radial center. The layout is larger, with the keys you need most at the center (which gives you less fatigue, McEnaney says). Keys that he considers “more useless” — including Q, K and X — are placed farther away.

He promises that anyone can become a capable BeeRaider typist in 20 minutes. It's a little weird to type in such a fashion, but was surprised at how natural it felt after five minutes, his fingers somehow finding the letters they needed. Having the alpha characters — the keys used most often — grouped together really helped memory retention as well.This makes the likelihood of the BeeRaider taking off more reasonable, if people have no intrinsic recollection of keys, they should be open to a new way of working. Using a new system could be better than QWERTY, but having to change key mapping could be difficult.If you're up for the challenge, the BeeRaider is available for pre-orders at $112.49 and you can opt between the optimized layout or the radial QWERTY design. Mobile users can try BeeRaider'sAndroid app($1.92), though it's somewhat complicated to use on small screens.

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Author : Mohammed Ashfaq Ahmed

Designation:Associate BloggerBio:A design oriented person who basically focus on the architectural phase rather than its actual implementation. He is a computer science engineer with expertise in UI framework.